Rural-Urban Outlooks: Unlocking Synergies (ROBUST) ROBUST receives funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 727988.* September 2018 University of Pisa Sabrina Arcuri, Francesca Galli, Massimo Rovai
[email protected] Rural-Urban Governance Arrangements and Planning Instruments Community for Food and Agro-biodiversity Lucca, Italy 1. Overview The Community for Food and Agro-biodiversity was established in December 2017 in the mountainous area of Garfagnana, in the Province of Lucca, in the wake of the national law n. 194/2015. This law regulates the protection and valorisation of biodiversity in agriculture and food. The Community for Food represents a multi-actor, cross-sectoral network governance arrangement. It is intended to coordinate existing public and private initiatives, as well as promote new projects for the conservation and valorisation of local agro-biodiversity. The relatively isolated territory of Garfagnana, enclosed between two mountain ranges (Apuan Alps and the Appennine), has given rise to high biodiversity and to a strong sense of community identity. On this basis, the Community for Food has been established as the natural “next step” to further the work that local actors – the Union of Municipalities and Custodian Farmers in the first place –started decades ago. 2. Main Challenges Agro-biodiversity conservation: Germplasm Bank and Custodian Farmers A rich variety of rare and local varieties of crops, livestock and micro-organisms to be protected constitutes the agro-biodiversity heritage of Garfagnana and is a main challenge for the local community, given the economic opportunities potentially presented by a valuable valorisation of such resources.